On a run through the old neighborhood this morning, I passed our old house. One entire side has been torn down, including the garage and the laundry room we built. A massive backhoe straddled the side yard, surrounded by piles of bricks and slate. Our deck had been reduced to a heap of splintered wood.

In the center of this reconstruction carnage I saw our old basketball hoop. The massive metal pole had been folded over, the backboard and rim flattened.

I wanted to cry.

It seemed odd that with so much of our former dwelling reduced to rubble, what got to me was the basketball hoop, but suddenly, I could hear my kids’ voices in the driveway, asking us to move the Suburban out of the way. It’s not like they were particularly good at basketball, or more than whimsically interested in it beyond pick-up games or a few rounds of horse. It’s just that the hoop was there, a constant, a possible way to pass a half-hour or so on a summer evening, or kill time before dinner.

Seeing it scrunched up like that got to me, in the same way the photograph of an explosion is disturbing but what really gets you is the child’s shoe atop the rubble.

I’ve made peace with moving. Home is here; I didn’t leave it in the mountains of muck and heaped brick. Today, though, I had to face the fact that we’ve left the basketball hoop behind.